


Crashing in Nashville

by Captain_Panda



Series: Growing Pains [3]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Iron Man 3, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Iron Man 3, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Protective Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23724610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Panda/pseuds/Captain_Panda
Summary: Iron Man 3AU.J.A.R.V.I.S. gets Tony to Tennessee--and Steve ubers him to safety. Or: thank God for waterproof cell phones.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Growing Pains [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707091
Comments: 22
Kudos: 165





	Crashing in Nashville

**Author's Note:**

> Tis I! With a _new_ fic! That's right folks, this is a new fic in our new 'verse, and I'm very excited to present it to you, so I won't stand in your way any longer. Hope you enjoy!  
> Yours,  
> -Cap'n Panda

With fumbling fingers, Tony answered his phone. 

He couldn’t even get out a breath, chest tight, mind reeling, before a familiar voice greeted:

“ _Hello_ _?”_

“Normally,” Tony began, but his teeth were already chattering, and his chest ached like a son of a bitch, and he was beginning to seriously regret his choice in heroic sidekicks because he was stuck in rural _Tennessee_ because of his artificial intelligence, “n-normally, Cap, I would be in the m-mood, for a, f-fireside ch-chat—”

“ _Are you all right? What’s going on?”_

“That,” chattered Tony, pacing around the dead suit, trying to stay moving to keep the blood flowing and not think about the blood caked on his face, “is for m-me t-to know and y-you t-to—”

“ _Awh, God, Tony, this isn’t the time for games, where the hell are you?”_

Cursing as he tripped over an unfolded metal bridge near the leg of the suit, Tony barked, “Tennessee! I am in fucking Tennessee, Cap, isn’t that wonderful? One place in the continental U.S. where I don’t have any—” Drawing in a shuddering breath, he spat out, “Contacts o-or s-s-s-safehouses o-o-or—”

“ _Breathe, Tony_ ,” Steve ordered, quiet but firm, probably thinking he was having a _panic attack_ , wasn’t that precious irony? He let out a hysterical little laugh, trying to inform Steve Rogers through gasping breaths that he was _fine_ , but he was pretty sure being sweat soaked in freezing temperatures was a fast-track to hypothermia. “ _Just breathe. Can you find a road?”_

“As a matter of _f-f-fact_ ,” Tony began, then swallowed, dropping to his knees beside his dead suit, feeling cold and small and sick and loathe to go anywhere near the road, near the population centers it would lead to and the help that he would eventually find. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to find a nice burrow and get warm for a while. In a rare moment of etiquette, he decided to warn Cap before he departed: “I’m hanging up now.”

Ferociously, Rogers snapped, “ _Tony, **no**_.” He’d heard the phrase a thousand times before—ignored it a thousand and one times—and yet, the adamancy, the tinge of panic on the other end of the line, kept him from dropping the phone to the snow and curling up beside it. “ _Listen to me_.”

“Bossy,” he whimpered. “You know w-we’re a t-team, right?”

“ _Tell me all about it when you get home_ ,” replied Rogers—Steve. He was Steve, because he was the only person in Tennessee that Tony knew, and he wasn’t even _there_. His voice was calm again, albeit thin, like a thread overextended, ready to snap. “ _I thought you were—_ ” He cut himself off before Tony could respond, saying shortly but clearly: “ _Listen to me, Tony: get to the road. Follow it to a population center_.”

He let out a little laugh, halfhearted and thin. Steve asked, “ _Tony?_ ”

“You’re s-so p-predictable,” he allowed. He gripped the suit’s open arm tightly, breath shaking in his chest, grinding his teeth in a vain attempt to stop their chattering. “N-next you’ll t-t-t-tell me t-to survey m-my s-s-surroundings.”

“ _What’s your status?_ ” Steve asked, ignoring the quip, his voice hard, military, a tone that Tony suspected had made more than one misbehaving rookie snap to attention. Tragically for him, it wasn’t as effective over the phone, because Tony had the sudden irrepressible image of Cap in a fuzzy pink bathrobe, complete with matching slippers. He snickered helplessly, grateful that he would die with laughter in his chest instead of cold loneliness.

 _Don’t leave me, buddy_.

Dreading the thought that Steve would hang up, he said suddenly, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He didn’t mean it, not really, no more than a, _Hey, let’s be friends_. “It’s just—it’s, this, _r-really?_ Of _a-all_ the p-people, I get hitched with—” Shaking his head in disbelief, he asked, “Since wh-when do y-you use a _cell ph-phone?_ ”

“ _Not really important_ ,” Steve reminded, and Tony supposed he had a fair point, except he regretted that he had somehow _missed_ it, wondering what other firsts he’d missed out on.

“You think Th-Thor can use a-a—?” he began, hopeful that maybe he could experience _that_ novelty, at least, but Steve cut him off, insisting:

“ _Tony, I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on._ ”

Making an ambivalent noise, Tony reminded fairly, “C-can’t h-help if you do.”

Steve made a frustrated noise of his own, saying, “ _Try me_ ,” before adding more seriously, “ _Not gonna lie, Tony, wasn’t expectin’ this. Caught me with my pants down here_.” That was a hell of an image, and Tony wanted to comment on it, but Steve blazed on, utterly oblivious as he added, “ _Look, Tennessee? Right? Get to a population center_.”

“G-gonna spot me an u-uber?” Tony asked, breath needle-sharp in his chest. “Sweet of y-you.” Bringing his free hand to his mouth, he breathed on it harshly, trying to warm it, swapping his phone. Thank God it was waterproof—he was amazed it hadn’t given up on life after its dip in the ocean, but he didn’t advertise Rolex quality for the hell of it. “Jesus, it’s c-c-cold. How’d you do it, h-huh? Wh-what’s life like as a p-p-popsicle?”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve said, sounding equal parts exasperated, pained, and genuinely worried. Sweet of him. “ _Please get to the road_.”

Planting his hand in the snow, Tony leveraged himself upright, bemoaning, “K-kind of a-a kn-knight in sh-shining armor a-are you, huh?” Looking at the suit, pain stabbing deep in his chest at the sight of it, he said aloud, “I-I c-can’t l-leave h-him.”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve warned, not knowing but suspecting, perhaps, that it was irrational, that Tony had—could _make_ —a dozen new suits, a hundred new suits, if he so desired. “ _Please take care of yourself. Who’s he?_ ”

“He w-w-wouldn’t leave m-me,” Tony said, which was objectively false, as J.A.R.V.I.S. _had_ left him, but the thought of abandoning the suit was unbearable. He might need it. God only knew what _for_ , but he might, and if he left it here, then someone else could find it. And that, he knew, bile rising in his throat at the memory of Justin fucking Hammer, could only mean bad things. “G-gonna put you on h-hold,” he informed Steve.

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve said again, his name a mantra, a curse, a warning, but Tony ignored him properly, stuffing the phone in his pocket and walking around the suit, limping in the snow, surveying the problem. He couldn’t string it over a shoulder—fully assembled, it weighed over two hundred pounds. He couldn’t disassemble it and carry only sole components, either—even the helmet weighed twelve pounds, and the torso was a solid fifty. Dragging it by one arm was a possibility, but it meant he would be vulnerable to attack, which made every inch of flesh not already covered in gooseflesh tingle unpleasantly, reminded how _vulnerable_ he was. 

“Cap?” he tried, even though he couldn’t really hear his response from his pocket. “Steve?” He fumbled around the suit, like it would yield, and then it did—it wasn’t much, but the ten feet of rope, intended as a sort of Boy Scout _you never know_ insurance, revealed itself, tucked away in the hip plate. It took some maneuvering, but he got the rope strung along the suit’s shoulders, shutting the open encasement forcefully, making it as easy to drag as possible.

“Got it,” he announced, the cold a numb thing, a distant thing, his shivers mercifully less forceful. “Got it,” he repeated, fishing out his phone with numb fingers. “C-call Pepper,” he ordered, ignoring whatever Steve was saying, repeating loudly, “ _call Pepper_ , tell her I’m okay. Please. I’m makin’ tracks.” Then he hung up, and began to drag the suit through the snow.

Immediately, his phone rang again, but he put it on silent, focusing on the task at hand. The suit was _heavy_ , and the rope burned in his hands. But he wasn’t a genius for nothing, and the pulley system was ancient in origin—it didn’t take long before he strung the rope across his own shoulders instead, dragging the suit smoothly like an ox across the snow. 

The exertion helped keep him warm, making his breath shiver in his chest and his teeth chatter quietly in his skull, but at least it kept him moving, following the line of the road towards the _population center_ in the distance, a handful of lights that he hoped weren’t some twisted hypothermia-induced mirage. He saw exactly three cars, and in the dark, not one of them even slowed down as they zipped by, their headlights at best catching a glimpse of him and the suit in the middle distance, trudging along.

Finally, maybe an hour, maybe three hours later, he stumbled into town, every limb burning with a mixture of cold and heat. Thanking the lucky stars up above for small mercies, he dragged a blanket from a Native American statue’s shoulders— _IOU, buddy_ , he thought, shivering as he huddled against the side of the Texaco gas station, the dead suit at his feet—and draped it around his own, breathing heavily. 

He knew he could go inside, get _warm_ , but he was— _paranoid_ was a strong word, but his home _had_ just been blown to pieces by the world’s premier terrorist ( _not his fault,_ he wanted the record to show that taunting a bad guy to fire a gun and firing said gun were _not_ the same thing, and he would win that argument in a court of law, and—and—hell, he’d been hit right where it hurt, and now he was in rural fucking _Tennessee_ ), and maybe he was taking the whole staying under the radar thing a little more seriously, now. Calling Steve had been a stupid idea—except, no, it wasn’t _his_ stupid idea, it was Steve’s. And why the hell was Steve calling him, anyway? Didn’t the douchebag know that he was under the radar? Now his cover was blown, and—

Gasping, he clung to the blanket, clung to the suit, and sank to the snowy floor, unable to breathe through the tightness in his chest. _I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die_. It wasn’t a hypothetical—it was real and earnest and terrible, not something that the Chitauri were going to make happen, not even a preordained vision of the future coming to life—no, it was right here in _Tennessee,_ that was how the mighty Tony Stark ended.

He fumbled blindly in his pocket, cursed colorfully, and managed to pull out his phone. And of course—half a dozen missed calls. Lowering it for a long moment, he swallowed compulsively, burying his hands in his hair, desperate to catch a deep breath, feeling like he was drowning in air, with nowhere else to go.

At last, chest rattling with every breath, he fumbled for his phone, pressed the call back button, and begged, “Help me, help me, help me.”

“ _Tony_ ,” he was almost glad it was Steve, God only knew what Pepper would say if she heard him in such a state, would probably call half the county police, to hell with secrecy, “ _God, what’s goin’ on?_ ”

“Please,” he whispered, forehead against his knees, huddling inward. “I—I need—I—”

“ _Okay_ ,” Steve said, voice surprisingly calm, reassuring, even though he could hear how wire-tight it was, strained, “ _okay, Tony. I’m here_.” After a short beat, he added, “ _Hey_.” Softer, smoother, he repeated, “ _Hey. It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna get through this_.” He said it like it was a given, as unhypothetical as the world collapsing around Tony’s shoulders, the wall holding it up. “ _I promise, Tony—it’s gonna be okay_.”

There was so much he could not possibly know. Or maybe he did—they didn’t keep tabs on each other, not much, not _really_. They were like planets orbiting the same star—never in alignment, always separated by unfathomable space, following different paths.

He ached, suddenly and powerfully, for a friend, for someone, anyone, beside him, but—and he could admit, to no one and nowhere but the tiny corner of his heart that needed it to be so, he especially wanted Cap there. Bruce was twitchy, Hawkeye was gruff, and Thor was—well, Thor was a bit _much_. Cap was the sort of calm in a crisis that Tony kind of desperately _needed_. Hung onto. He didn’t catch every word, only heard his name, sprinkled here and there, but he nodded anyone, listened for it. _Okay, Tony?_

And it was. Slowly, slowly, it was.

Embarrassed, ashamed, and grateful beyond measure that Steve couldn’t actually see him, he declared as civilly as he could manage, “Thank you for your service.”

Steve sighed, paused audibly, like he was scrapping what he really wanted to say, and finally said, “ _I’ll be there, soon as I can_.”

There was a lump in Tony’s throat. He held the stolen blanket to it, trying to keep it at bay as he rasped, “You don’t even know where I am.”

“ _I’ll find you_.” There was not even a shred of doubt in his voice. 

Were they enemies, Tony mused, it would have been haunting, a phrase to keep him awake at night: there was nowhere in the world, he knew, that Captain America would not _try_ to find him, and he’d given him a hell of a starting point. 

Suddenly desperate for idea to become reality, Tony looked around, peering into the snowy darkness for clues, but there were frustratingly few markers.

“There’s a Texaco gas station,” he alerted. “It’s—rural. Only one road leading in. There’s a highway in the boon dogs, maybe I-70? I don’t—I don’t know, it’s— I can—”

“ _Get warm_ ,” advised Steve, cutting in gently but firmly. “ _Stay low. I’ll be there_.” Tony swallowed, aware that he was about to be left alone again and desperate not to be alone. “ _I’ll be there. Got it?_ ”

“Roger dodger,” he whispered, wishing he had more energy for the joke and less despair, knowing that the Mandarin was out there, and maybe the Mandarin would get to him first, and that would be that. It wasn’t impossible, right? Who knew if Steve’s phone was secure? “I’ll be counting the hours,” he said, not quite teasing.

“ _Be there soon,_ ” was all Steve said, and hung up.

* * *

Seven hours later, dozing on a couch in an abandoned, threadbare garage, Tony jerked awake when he heard the sound of crackling snow just outside the window. 

Paranoia hit him like a freight train, and he found himself huddling on the floor, immediately sensing danger, heart beating fast in his chest. The Iron Man suit lounged on the couch, in sorry need of repairs— _stupid, stupid, totally exposed_ —but there was no time to complain, no time to worry about it, as the door to the garage was manually lifted upwards, noisy in the dark, and a shadow appeared.

“You know,” Steve Rogers greeted, voice filling the space like warm candlelight, “that nightlight of yours comes in handy.” He tugged on a string, illuminating the space in dim light, and gestured at his own parka-clad chest, right where the arc reactor lay on Tony’s. His face was drawn, worried, and he looked over Tony and said, “Fury pulled a few strings. Thanks for narrowing the field.” Stamping his feet, he took in the garage, then looked at Tony and added seriously, “You hurt?”

Finally, Tony found it in him to move—pushing himself to his feet, he lurched forward, crash-landing against Steve’s chest, hard enough to fell a lesser man, barely enough to make Steve Rogers rock an inch. “Hey,” he said, soft, reassuring, one arm curving around Tony’s back, the other fumbling at his own jacket for a moment, unzipping it, and Tony didn’t wait for a formal invitation, burrowing underneath it, pressing against him and the radiator heat pouring from him. “Easy, easy. I’ve got you.” He wrapped both arms tightly around Tony, trapping the warm air between them, and Tony ducked his head, feeling Steve’s breath wafting through his hair as he spoke. “Got you, Tony. Can’t believe you’re—s’okay. Everything’s okay now.”

It wasn’t, and he needed to tell him, to _warn_ him, if nothing else, but the idea that Captain America would cower if he knew the trouble Tony Stark was in was laughable. He was a man who leapt on grenades. There was no trepidation in his tone as he added, “We’re gonna be fine. Get you home, all right? You’re with me now.” With a small noise, he amended, “And Natasha.”

 _Oh_. Staying fully burrowed, Tony remarked against his collar, “You two a—unit?”

“Yeah, lots of time sittin’ on our hands on the job,” Steve said, his voice amused. “You serious?”

Tony let out a huff of mutual laughter, like the idea was laughable—because of course, to virtuous Captain America, hooking up with a teammate _was_ laughable—but he couldn’t deny the relief as Steve added companionably, “Wasn’t happy, you know, with me bailin’ in the middle of things, but Fury owes me.”

“Really?” That was wonderfully exploitable. Pulling back to look at him, Tony slung his arms around his middle so they could keep the heat between them, the inadvertent intimacy of the gesture startling. Thankfully, it didn’t show in his tone as he added, “For what?”

Lifting both eyebrows, Steve said, “You’d know, if you answered his calls.” Scowling at him, Tony might have shoved him back if it wasn’t scarcely above freezing in the dingy garage if only to wipe the smug grin off his face, rolling his eyes and pointedly planting his forehead against Steve’s sternum, like he could not imagine a more trivial answer. “S.H.I.E.L.D. plays ball,” Steve elaborated generously, resting his chin on top of Tony’s head as he huddled a little closer. “Bit of a barter system.”

“Huh.” Mostly just grateful for any excuse to stay in his immediate radius, Tony said, “I would have said they paid in blood.”

Steve made an ambivalent noise that wasn’t entirely comforting, but the way he chafed his gloved hand up and down Tony’s back was. “Get you outta here, all right? Unless you’re more comfortable—”

“No,” Tony said immediately.

Steve nodded, then started to pull back. Reluctantly, Tony let go. “That case,” Steve said, looking over at the dead armor and back at him.

“No go,” Tony confirmed. Steve nodded once, then shrugged out of the parka. Tony opened his mouth to protest, but he hadn’t even managed the second syllable of _you don’t_ before Steve had finished guiding his arms into the sleeves and zipping it to the chin, stepping over to the suit and picking it up in a fireman carry without a hitch. “How dare you,” Tony said, and that made him pause, actually look vaguely apologetic despite the dryness in Tony’s tone.

Looking him over, indubitably comical in the outsized parka, Steve asked, very pointedly, “Would you like to carry it?”

Tilting his chin up, folding both arms over his chest, Tony said, “You’ve made your choice. Live with it.”

Steve grinned, a flash of teeth, before nodding towards the door and saying, “S’what I thought. Follow me.” He flicked the light off on the way out, the sudden darkness disorienting, but his stride didn’t break.

Hurrying after him, Tony said seriously, “You’re insane.”

“Maybe,” Steve conceded, jacket-free but still comfortably warm, projecting heat Tony could feel embedded in the jacket tucked cozily around him. “Runs in the family,” he said, looking at Tony, a twinkle of real mirth in his eyes.

“We’re not brothers,” Tony said, a little too emphatically.

Steve paused, squinted at him, trying to get a read on him. Then he resumed walking with a shake of his head. “Sometimes,” he reflected, footsteps crunching louder with the added weight of the suit on his shoulders, “a family is just two guys and an Iron Man suit.” Grinning at his own joke, he added, “How’s that for a family?”

“Acceptable,” Tony allowed, emotion welling painfully in his throat. He knew it was just the near-death experience talking, but he still couldn’t stop his mouth from running off on him as he added, “I missed you, you know?”

“Yeah?” Steve didn’t stop, but his voice was quieter, somber, as he paused in front of a low-key rental car, popping the backseat door open and easing the suit across them. Pulling back to look at Tony, he looked him over once and admitted seriously, “I saw the news.”

The lump in Tony’s throat turned sharp. “In my defense—”

“I’m not mad,” Steve assured, his voice as calm as still waters. Shutting the door, he gestured at the front of the car, and Tony didn’t ask, just fished in Steve’s parka pocket for the key and hopped in the driver’s seat. “I’m just—”

“If you say _disappointed_ , I’ll abandon you in the nearest river,” Tony warned, feeling something in his shoulders relax as he turned on the car and locked the doors. Cranking up the heater, he unzipped the jacket and chucked it into the backseat, over the defunct Iron Man, adding, “I can only handle disappointment from one man in my life and his name is Nick Fury.”

With a huff of laughter, Steve said, “Ain’t that the truth.” Resting an arm along the passenger’s seat windowsill, he looked at Tony and asked lightly, “You sure you’re up for a drive?”

Scoffing in genuine affront, Tony asked, “Do you even _know_ how many car crashes I’ve lived to tell the tale?” After a beat, he admitted, “In my head, that was more reassuring.”

Steve rewarded him with a laugh—an oddly contagious little laugh that made Tony grin at the windshield, stifling it as best as he could with a stiff warning: “I’ll find a river. Try me.”

“I believe it,” Steve said, voice grave, smiling out the window as he added, “Natasha’s gonna kill me, but I can’t imagine you wanna drive all the way back to D.C.?”

Stunned momentarily speechless, Tony demanded, “Do you have a _tracker_ on me? How in the—?”

Shaking his head, Steve rubbed his brow and said, “No, no. I jetted in—like I said, Fury’s a miracle worker. Landed outside Nashville. Been driving around ever since. Almost hit a deer, that was neat.”

“Neat,” Tony deadpanned, snorting once, unable to help himself. “Finds a needle in a haystack, kills himself with local wildlife.”

“You know, the Texaco thing was good,” Steve said serenely. “I just tracked ‘em down with that Google thing. You were eighth in line.”

“Don’t I feel special.” Kicking up the speed—defying a cop to pull them over, or Captain Honorable himself to complain about a speed limit he probably didn’t know they were exceeding by nearly thirty, eager to put miles between them and the tiny town that he’d come to associate with _dread_ —Tony added dryly, “I can’t believe you. Really. Cell phones are one thing, but _Google_? You use Google Maps?”

Steve said, very pointedly, “I’m twenty-nine, Stark. Might come as a shock that I’m not too old to learn new tricks.”

“Did they even have _electricity_ —”

“Oh, fuck _off_ ,” Steve laughed, _laughed_ , reaching up to rub his own mouth, growling, “and quit temptin’ fate, nobody wants to waste an officer’s time with petty crime.”

“Excuse you, I’m just trying to not waste Ms. Romanoff’s.” Easing off the gas, dawdling—no way in hell was he putting in eight hours of driving just to be in fucking D.C. for whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. business Steve and Natasha were up to, he admitted, “Okay, Boy Scout, where to? What next?”

“Nash is pretty,” Steve drawled.

“Who calls it _Nash_?” Tony grumbled to himself in mock disappointment, tutting audibly, smirking when Steve rolled his eyes. “Fine. Nash it is. In the morning I want _hash_ , which I will pay for in _cash_ , and then we can go see _Tash_ —”

“Doesn’t even rhyme,” Steve said mournfully.

“Slant rhyme,” Tony shrugged. “Close enough.”

“Poet.”

“One of my many skills.”

“Mm. Many.”

“Many,” Tony agreed, glancing over at him briefly, eyes shut in amusement. “Fallin’ asleep on me, old man?”

“No,” Steve said, flicking his gaze over. True to his word, he looked midday alert. It wasn’t fair, really. “Lemme know when you wanna switch,” he added.

“Kinky,” Tony said.

Steve sighed, began, “Tony.”

“You set yourself up for that one.”

“Did I?”

“You did.”

“I missed you, too, Tony.”

Surprisingly moved by the simple statement, Tony said, “Well.” He cleared his throat, tensing and releasing his grip on the steering wheel. “See if you feel the same way after we reach _Nash_. Maybe I’ll even introduce you to _M.A.S.H._ ”

“Not gonna let that one go, are you?” Steve asked, the affection in his voice making Tony’s heart thump a little harder.

Mustering as much gravity as he could, Tony said seriously, “Nope.” Then: “Stash. Dash. Crash.” Wrinkling his nose, he added, “Rash.”

“Tony?”

“Mm?”

“It’s gonna be okay.”

Nodding once, Tony tried to say, _I know_. The words didn’t come, the silence hauling on long between them. Driving in silence, he settled a hand idly, utterly inconsequentially, on the console between them. Without remarking on it, Steve rested his own heavily over it, giving it a squeeze.

And it finally, finally felt like it _was_ gonna be okay. To hell with the Mandarin. He had Captain America on his team.


End file.
